Figuring Out Who You Are

Getting divorced can mean a dramatic change in your lifestyle and if you’re weighing up your marriage, that can make it a difficult decision. There are always trade-offs and it’s a very personal decision that often starts with figuring out who you are.

My current guest Suzy realized very early in her marriage that it was a union without physical or emotional intimacy. Her and her husband tacitly covered up the cracks and constructed a beautiful looking marriage. Behind the scenes, Suzy was figuring out who she was and what she wanted. Here’s Suzy:

About four years into the marriage we moved to Asia with my husband’s job. It was wonderful, because I wasn’t working anymore. I was just a stay-at-home mom and he started traveling. He was traveling 70-80 percent of the time and it left me with time to start dealing with myself and feel like, “What am I doing here? This is crazy.”

That’s when I ended up hiring a life coach, because I figured out, I could end up being unfaithful and then he would totally use that against me, blame me for everything. It was just a total set-up for him to be the good guy and I didn’t want that, because that’s wrong.

I started realizing, “I’m really passionate. I really want a passionate relationship. This isn’t happening. I can’t take it anymore.” That’s when I realized I had to get out. It was just untenable.

I started trying to talk to him more and more. I started having much more upfront conversations and sometimes I did that really well and sometimes I did it really badly, but I really tried all of the angles and it was completely ineffective. Everything was ineffective. He was completely stonewalling me.

I wanted him to be able to get on with his life. I didn’t want to butcher him, because he’s gay. There’s no crime. It’s fine, but the crime, if there was any, was that he couldn’t talk about it and so I had to basically work with taking heat for the break-up while he’s acting like the good guy. That was the hard part.

In the end I knew he really wanted the marriage to be over, because the minute I asked for a divorce he was like, “Okay.” It was like no big deal. He didn’t want it either. In a way I had the most smooth divorce, because he didn’t want to be with me. So, that’s the bottom line of the story.

The Divorce Coach Says

I love that Suzy made a conscious decision to be proactive about her marriage rather than accepting it and being unfaithful.

Here you see Suzy trying to talk to her husband about their lack of intimacy and not being able to get him to engage. This is very telling.

When you find the courage to talk about an issue you know is a sensitive one and your spouse blocks it, that should make it very clear that it isn’t something that your spouse is willing to work on. Then it comes down to you deciding if this is the relationship you want for your marriage, for the rest of your life. And that’s about figuring out who you are and what you want.